There are outer problems ans there are inner problems. Until now we did not know that we are one global community. We saw ourselves as very, very separate. Now we are learning we are one mass of people (with our advances in methods and speed of travel, communication, trade, etc.). Now it is easier to see that it is when there are large portions of this global community suffering from inner turmoil that this inner turmoil reflects into the outer world, creating disturbances. If there are outer disturbances, it is simply because the majority of people on earth have inner turmoils. As long as that is the case, there will continue to be large scale outer problems that manifest in the world. Therefore, we simply need to work on ourselves and our communities in a positive way to alleviate these problems. Until understanding of ourselves grows and begins to manifest in how our socieites function and inner turmoil become resolved as a general rule, there will be factions out to cause much disturbance and harm externally. Welcome to a new day and age, ladies and gentlemen. The future is now.

Kevin

"When we are following Dharma, any kind of Dharma - Sutra, Tantra - most important is that first of all we know our condition, not Dharma". - The maestro ChNN

Very sad, did not realize the scale of the attacks. The attack on Suu Kyi though is not completely fair. Although she doesn't mention the massacre by name, she did make this statement recently:BBCBurma's Suu Kyi urges minority rights

Aung San Suu Ski was elected to parliament in AprilContinue reading the main storyBurma: Battle for Democracy

Ethnic strife remainsEU 'to ease sanctions'What now?Voices: Bright futureBurmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has called for laws to protect the rights of ethnic minority groups in her first statement in parliament.

She said such laws were important for Burma to become a truly democratic nation of mutual respect.

Burma has undergone a series of political reforms initiated by the military-backed government.

But some parts of Burma are still hit by conflict and unrest, most recently in Rakhine state.

"To become a truly democratic union with a spirit of the union, equal rights and mutual respect, I urge all members of parliament to discuss the enactment of the laws needed to protect equal rights of ethnicities," she said, in support of a motion by a ruling party MP.

Poverty in ethnic minority areas also needed to be addressed, she said.

Ms Suu Kyi, who was freed from house arrest in late 2010, was elected to parliament in by-elections in April.

Peace deals have been reached with a number of Burma's ethnic groups, many of whom battled the military junta for years in pursuit of greater autonomy. But fighting is continuing in Kachin state.

Ms Suu Kyi's speech also comes a month after deadly clashes in parts of Burma's western Rakhine state between majority Buddhists and minority Muslims, sparked by the rape and murder of a young Buddhist woman.

Aung San Suu Kyi made no specific mention of the Muslim Rohingya people in her speech, and has to date remained relatively quiet on the issue.

Asked in June whether Rohingya should be regarded as Burmese citizens, she said: "I do not know", saying Burma should clarify its citizenship laws.

In a report last week, human rights group Amnesty International said Muslims in western Rakhine state had been subjected to attacks and arbitrary arrests in the weeks since the violence - claims the government described as "groundless and biased".

The Burmese government says they are relatively recent migrants from the Indian sub-continent. Neighbouring Bangladesh already hosts several hundred thousand refugees from Burma and says it cannot take any more.

Nemo wrote:As an experiment read the Koran and judge Mohammed by today's standards. That was the mistake I made.

He recommended beating your wife in at least three places that I remember. The best was where he recommends beating your wife for no reason. If you only beat your wife when she does something wrong she'll get uppity. Random beatings keep your wife humble. He had 16 wives. The youngest he married when she was 6. I know that's creepy, don't worry he did not consumate the marriage till she was 9. Also recorded are two sex slaves/concubines and at least 4 other female followers who gave themselves to him.

He had strange visions and heard voices. Salman Rushdie looked into that in the Satanic Verses.

After being thrown out of Mecca he became a murdering bandit. He attacked wealthy merchant caravans on the days of the moon even bandits were sworn not to attack. He told his band of murderous thieves that God said it was virtuous to be so sneaky.

With the proceeds from murdering and pillaging he expanded his bandits into an army. He molded himself into a very effective military commander over eight years of bloody brutal war. He murdered entire tribes and sold the woman and children into slavery for profit. As his power grew so did his atrocities. By the end he declared the "war of the knife" instructing his followers to murder any idolater they encountered on the spot. He fought strategically and ruthlessly. He was an impresive general by anyones standards. But is that what a religious leader should be?

Reading the Koran I encountered a very evil and selfish man. Once read it could not be unread.

Ask yourself If he were alive today what would the world think of him?

Nothing good, I should think - if I read Koran without any commentaries and without all the subtle but so very, very thick sauce it's been covered in and dissolved into over the years. And exactly the same applies to the Old Testament - it's authors turning out to be simply creepy, sadistic psychos - and even, surprise, surprise, the New one; you really read it attentively, all of it, and you'll find horrors piled upon horrors there too. Provided, that is, you're trying hard to do what's next to impossible (all in all, almost perfectly impossible, I'd say) for any ethnic Muslim or Christian and separating the 'original' from its endless rewritings and reinterpretations.

There's the rub.

Being Muslim doesn't require reading Koran at all. It doesn't require reading Koran with any actual understanding - and indeed, in the case of the majority of Muslims, it doesn't involve such sort of reading, very few people being capable of it in the end. It certainly never entails and cannot entail reading Koran-as-it-is-written, and, for the 90% of the population, generally involves no reading of the Book at all, or hair-risingly selective reading at best. And that reading, goes without saying, is never unfiltered; it is shaped through the ever-varying influence of commentaries high and low, general culture, uprbringing, personal situation, as well as million other factors. They never read the Koran. What they read, if they read it (or anything else) at all, tiny portions of a broken-up Koran, its fragmentated, elusive and endlessly distorted echo.

It's more or less exactly the same situation as it is with the Bible and Christians, even Protestant ones: every Christian knows that the Bible is oh-so-wise, but almost no-one really reads it; the few that do just re-read their perennial faves - and, with the exception of a tiny minority, construe them at the same time the way they've been conditioned to do it and the way it pleases them, not the way the churches teach. And, the shocking truth is, it's always been like that.

treehuggingoctopus wrote:Nothing good, I should think - if I read Koran without any commentaries and without all the subtle but so very, very thick sauce it's been covered in and dissolved into over the years. And exactly the same applies to the Old Testament - it's authors turning out to be simply creepy, sadistic psychos - and even, surprise, surprise, the New one; you really read it attentively, all of it, and you'll find horrors piled upon horrors there too. Provided, that is, you're trying hard to do what's next to impossible (all in all, almost perfectly impossible, I'd say) for any ethnic Muslim or Christian and separating the 'original' from its endless rewritings and reinterpretations.

There's the rub.

Being Muslim doesn't require reading Koran at all. It doesn't require reading Koran with any actual understanding - and indeed, in the case of the majority of Muslims, it doesn't involve such sort of reading, very few people being capable of it in the end. It certainly never entails and cannot entail reading Koran-as-it-is-written, and, for the 90% of the population, generally involves no reading of the Book at all, or hair-risingly selective reading at best. And that reading, goes without saying, is never unfiltered; it is shaped through the ever-varying influence of commentaries high and low, general culture, uprbringing, personal situation, as well as million other factors. They never read the Koran. What they read, if they read it (or anything else) at all, tiny portions of a broken-up Koran, its fragmentated, elusive and endlessly distorted echo.

It's more or less exactly the same situation as it is with the Bible and Christians, even Protestant ones: every Christian knows that the Bible is oh-so-wise, but almost no-one really reads it; the few that do just re-read their perennial faves - and, with the exception of a tiny minority, construe them at the same time the way they've been conditioned to do it and the way it pleases them, not the way the churches teach. And, the shocking truth is, it's always been like that.

The worst part is I read the Koran in an attempt to be more tolerant. I wanted to be more informed. I don't think I knew anyone who actually read it. The first few chapters went well. But when an actual religious man would have become more tolerant and patient Mohammed starts murdering people. He gets progressively more vengeful and bloodthirsty as the war goes on. I don't think something that evil can ever be turned into a path of spiritual enlightenment. I may be an idealist but I think genocidal generals should be reviled not celebrated. Being worshiped for 1300 years does not make it more respectable, at least not to me. It's like making Hitler a saint if he'd won the war. Imagine people praying to Hitler for guidance. The foundation is rotten. Trying to turn that into a religion seems very fishy to me.

I find the Old Testament disgusting with good reason. I don't think black people are demons or that gays should be murdered. I work on the Sabbath so I would need to be put to death. There is nothing to be gained from respecting such primitive and violent beliefs. Allowing people to call the atrocities of psychopaths God's will is never going to end well. Stripping evil actions of their moral component by using the fable of divine revelation is profoundly evil and highly addictive.

If people can't follow the rules of their religion because they are too primitive or evil why not retire the whole thing. If the murdering and urging to commit genocide was actually preached against and removed I could respect it. As long as it is there I can't trust any religion that preaches such things. The seeds of evil are planted. History teaches that such ideologies sprout quite regularly and with disastrous consequences.

JKhedrup wrote:"Video no longer available due to copyright claim by the Buddhist Foundation"

Wow, Diamond Way moves fast.

Well, when your leader is prone to making the kind of odious remarks that appear in that clip on a regular basis, you probably have to be quick off the mark. I am sure that Google/Youtube receive regular requests from the Diamondway Buddhist Foundation (Diamondway's US umbrella group) to remove stuff "on copyright grounds". I am pretty sure they scan these and other forums for just this kind of thing.

Response to Nemo:

I think you miss the point. While the violent language of the Koran and the Old Testament is used by many fundamentalists to justify their actions, there are many more people who read and follow these texts who are law-abiding and good people. Even though Buddhist texts are generally deficient in the kind of thing you point out, it has not stopped the Buddhist monks in Burma acting in a wholly repugnant manner. As it did not stop Sri Lankan monks during the fight against the Tamil Tigers or Japanese monks during WWII and it does not stop Ole Nydahl in his eurocentric anti-Muslim crusade.

When religious identity is infected with national/tribal identity, the philosophical content of the religion is always subordinate to the desire for tribal supremacy.

Everyone talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it - Mark Twain.

The great thing about Buddhism is that such actions are utterly indefensible. Buddha even watched his own family and tribe be murdered. The Buddha was perfectly clear and concise in his example. He deliberately gave a sermon to a warrior who thought he would go to heaven for his nobility and told him flat out the only place someone like him goes is hell. Even with all these safeguards on rare occasions it has been misused.

How much more so a religion that actively promotes murder and genocide of nonbelievers? A religion that promises eternal paradise for murderers.Too dangerous to be left unchallenged IMO. If the believers were really so moderate Irshad Manji and Salman Rushdie would not have to live in constant fear of being murdered. There are at least four theocracies that have been created in the last century where currently speaking against the Koran is a capital crime. Being tolerant has a limit. Eventually you are empowering evil by doing nothing. Unless the moderates actively remove the evil it doesn't stop being dangerous. The moderates who have attempted the first baby steps towards this have been marked for death. Kind of a really bad sign that saying maybe beating your wife is wrong despite what the Koran says is something to be murdered over.